1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to electromechanical connections, and more particularly to electromechanical connections with printed circuit boards in handheld telephone sets.
2. Brief Description of the Related Art
The design of portable telephones has evolved along several different lines. This evolution can be characterized in part by a miniaturization of the components of the telephone, and therefore of the telephone itself. Other advances in, e.g. battery technologies, have allowed handheld telephones to be used longer without requiring recharging of the external battery.
In typical handheld telephones, an external battery is removably mounted to the telephone housing. With the development of Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card technologies, it has become convenient to mount the SIM card in a recess in the telephone housing over which the external battery was then mounted. While providing a convenient location for installing and removing SIM cards, this solution is not without its drawbacks. The external battery can be dislodged, exposing the sensitive SIM card and its associated electrical connections to external contaminants such as dirt, dust, and moisture. Furthermore, the placement of the SIM card's receiving recess in the external battery recess requires complex, and therefore costly, printed circuit board (PCB) design in order to connect the SIM card and external battery to the PCB's electronic components. With the further advances of external adaptive devices, such as battery chargers and system connections, including external microphones and speakers, the design and layout of the PCB and its associated electromechanical connectors has become increasingly complicated, distributed, and costly to assemble.
Further improvements in battery technologies allow for handheld telephones to be supplied power by an internal battery, that is, a battery that is housed within the telephone's shells, and which is not readily removable for replacement. While the use of such internal batteries will lead to further improvements in telephone design, the elimination of the external battery and it's mounting recess in the telephone's housing creates a need for a protected location in or on the telephone for placement of a SIM card recess. Prior handheld telephone's have not provided a solution to this problem.
Prior handheld telephone designs have also suffered from deficiencies in their layout and design by not minimizing the number of components that must be assembled together to construct the telephone. Thus, prior devices have been unnecessarily expensive to assembly, requiring additional steps to solder and otherwise join the many subcomponents together. This also leads to increases in assembly time, and the possibility of greater rejection rates with higher numbers of assembly steps.
Examples of prior handheld telephones and electrical connectors include EP 840 396 A1, JP 4-043 725, GB 2 316 814, EP 827 360 A2, WO 98/13981 A1, U.S. Pat. No. 4,636,591, U.S. Pat. No. 4,675,903, EP 609 744 A1, EP 701 303 A2, WO 96/07221 A1, EP 828 320 A1, and CA 2 087 080 A, all of which are incorporated by reference in their entireties herein.